Amiga 3000 and Dell flat panel LCD?

[Zac67]

All Desktop TFTs I've seen (~20) always expand the input to full screen. The A3k's NTSC interlaced flicker-fixed (non overscanned!) is rather similar to Standard VGA, so there's only little reason why the Dell should not be able to display the Miggy's output.

Sharpness is another issue: the TFT zooms everything to its native 1280x1024, so any other resolution tends to look fuzzy - BUT if you use PAL interlaced flicker-fixed (640x512) it should exactly double each pixel in height and width and the picture should be 100% sharp (NTSC will be slightly blurred vertically).
As the TFT's most probably not very familiar with that kind of signal it may be necessary to adjust its pixel clock and phase manually apart from using the Auto button.

[...]Looking at the docs shows a minimum vertical frequency of 56 Hz, so PAL's probably not an option, sorry...

btw: I wouldn't buy a slow TFT any more, the Dell's 20ms mean 50 Hz refresh - no flicker, of course, but anything faster than that will smear or vanish completely. Better get   at most 15ms for watching videos or less for gaming.

[Zac67]

Nagromme wrote:
1. What typically happens with the border (empty overscan region)?

The border's usually out of the TFT's bounds so you can call it fullscan. The timing of the Amiga display is quite different (because of potential overscan), so it's really more a 768x576 (PAL) display with only 640x512 square used. Would be really interesting to see what the TFT makes out of that...

2. What about if you ARE using overscan, in DeluxePaint, say. Will you get all the pixels on the LCD?

Haven't ever tried it - now that I really think about it, I'd have to really take a TFT home...

I've seen LCDs zoom, and I don't find it to be much softer than a CRT is anyway.

Pretty much a difference, just take a look at 800x600 on 17"TFT (XGA) - 8^P On a 17" CRT it's 100% sharp.

Or is there some kind of hardware adapter that could double the Hz on the way to the monitor?

Like a 100 Hz TV set? Maybe, but you surely wouldn't want to pay for it...

And when you say "slow TFT" are you referring to the 1905 I mentioned?

Yes, it's spec'ed with 20ms and that translates to 50 Hz (1000ms / 20ms = 50 Hz) - the lower the response time the faster you see what's on the screen.

Or another Dell that DOES handle less than 56Hz?

Response time doesn't have anything to do with minimum refresh - and I wouldn't recommend Dell anyway...

I've seen slower LCDs with fast motion and I don't expect I'll mind it the way some do. This Dell even got a good review for gaming. It seems that the ms number is only a part of the smearing issue, judging by user reports. Some units with a slower number get reported as having less smearing visible, for some reason.

Yes, the smaller the response time, the better - see above.